Crate and Barrel's Ultimate Wedding Contest

Our love story.

On a steamy Florida September night, a vision in a white bikini and a gangly fella with a busted lip and skin just a shade darker than Boo Radley met at an impromptu pool party. After horning in on her conversation with one of his co-workers, Randy impressed Shannon with his mane of chest hair and killer black basketball shorts. Shannon impressed Randy with her sense of humor and ability to look past the fresh stitches in his upper lip. Three years later, the lip has healed, but the laughter has never stopped.

Three important details about our Ultimate Wedding.

We both come from divorced families, so even getting married is kind of a shock in our family. The real problem, though, is there isn’t any money to throw a wedding. None. We both had to take out crazy loans for college, so whatever wedding we’ve planned is paid for by Shannon and I. That hasn’t stopped our families from insisting on inviting all of our extended family, though. We’ll make it work somehow, and hopefully we’ll have our friends and family together to celebrate our wedding on the same beach Shannon and I went to on our first date.

Our everyday dream day.

We’ve been working so hard to pay for the wedding (80-hour work weeks?!?), we haven't seen much of each other. My dream day would be to not be more than 10 feet away from her for an entire day. Nothing fancy. Sleep in, grab a couple of sandwiches for lunch, then drive to the beach. Later, it’s dinner at a small beachside place to watch the sun set. Cap the night off with some ice cream. It may sound lame, but the key to this is we're together the whole time. That's a dream day after the year we've had.